Review of Drive (2011)

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DRIVE
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

It has been a long while since anything presented on screen has actually been worthy of being presented on screen, at least in the visual and cerebral sense. “Drive” is a phenomenal achievement and in my opinion, a masterpiece from it’s amazing cinematography, which is epic and intimate at the same time, to the characters who don’t need to say much to convey how they feel with themselves and with those that surround them.

The music guides us, as well as plummets the viewer into Los Angeles in a way only two previous films have before, Friedkin’s “To Live and Die in L.A.” and Michael Mann’s “Heat.” I do not want to give anything away because the film must be experienced in a cinema, even nicer if you are able to find a cinema with a large scope screen. This is the art of cinema at its finest especially at a time when the world of cinema is crumbling around us with the death of film, the death of the movie theatre, and the death of cinema altogether. It has been a long time since a film has made me see a glimmer of hope that some filmmakers, producers, and distributors still give a damn about what they create.

There has been some better acting performances lately but they are still trapped in lackluster movies like “Moneyball” and “The Descendents.” Writing seems to be dead for now as the dedication lies in digital popcorn fare, LIEMAX, and 3D. I mean, do we really need to re-release “Titanic” or “Star Wars” in converted 3D? Enough with the 3D gimmick because that’s all it is, a gimmick. “Avatar” is “Dances with Wolves” meets “Ferngully” meets “The Smurfs” but tack on 3D and hype to it and you now have a masterpiece, such a joke. I will admit James Cameron and George Lucas can create amazing worlds but they lack a whole lot in their writing abilities especially when it comes to dialogue.

“Drive” makes up for what has been missing in modern cinema. The direction, the cast, the writing, the novel, the entire crew for that matter has created perfection. “Drive” is such a special film that I want to go back and see it again.